Murphy Was a Capoeirista

18122007

These are some capoeira maxims I came up with just for fun a while ago, inspired by Murphy’s Laws. I don’t know how widely they apply to capoeiristas in general, but in my training experience, I’ve lived by them!

Murphy’s Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.

1. The longer and the harder you work at doing something right, the higher the chances are that you’ll be caught out the one time you do it wrong.

2. The degree of certainty with which your teacher states something is directly proportional to the likelihood that they mean the exact opposite or something else entirely. Exceptions to this are when it is equal to the degree of certainty with which another teacher tells you the exact opposite, or something else entirely.

3. The amount of rushing you do to arrive at an event on time directly influences the lateness with which it will begin, increasing the exact amount of rushing you did not have to do. This is also known as the Universal Theory of Brazilian Time Dilation.

4. The class(es) you miss, no matter where, when, or why, will always, categorically, and unconditionally be the class(es) you most wish you had attended

5. A watched student never moves. (Note: This law is only ever concluded by teachers through empirical evidence and inductive reasoning, due to a freak coincidence of constant impeccable timing between the exact moment a student tires out and the exact moment a teacher checks across the room.)